Summary: God offers each of us some amazing gifts: how many of them do we open, utilize, and appreciate?

2. For Millennia, people of many cultures celebrated festive times by giving and receiving gifts. So it was natural that, when Christians starting celebrating Christmas, they gave and received gifts. Nothing wrong with that.

3. But not all gifts are well received.

According to Daily Mail (UK, adjusted to American English/money),

• On average, we receive eight Christmas presents and hate two of them

6. God has offered mankind some amazing gifts; some are appreciated, some not. Some are embraced — at first — and then discarded. Others are treated with contempt and totally unwanted. Some remain completely unopened.

James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

Main idea: God offers each of us some amazing gifts: how many of them do we open, utilize, and appreciate?

A. The gift of ETERNAL life via forgiveness via the atonement activated by faith (Romans 6:23)

1. Note the chain of events

2. Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord

3. God saves us in a way that we are humbled (grace) but not humiliated.

4. My conversion: I thought God graded on a curve, I had to earn heaven…

5. When with other believers, we find ourselves among equals/new society

6. Romans 4:4-5 “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness…”

• Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”